Later declassified, the Robertson Panel's report concluded that
UFOs were not a direct threat to national security, but could pose
an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications
due to public interest in the subject. Most UFO reports, they
concluded, could be explained as misidentification of mundane
aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all
likelihood, be similarly explained with further study.

The Robertson Panel concluded that a public relations campaign should be
undertaken in order to "debunk" UFOs, and
reduce public interest in the subject, and that civilian UFO groups
should be monitored. There is evidence this was carried out more
than two decades after the Panel's conclusion; see "publicity and
responses" below.

Critics (including a few panel members) would later lament the
Robertson Panel's role in making UFOs a somewhat disreputable field
of study.

Documents indicate that the CIA became involved at the request of
the National
Security Council after President Truman personally expressed
concern over UFOs at a July 28, 1952, NSC meeting. (However, there
was no formal NSC meeting on that date). The CIA's study was
largely conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence
(OSI). The CIA thought the question so pressing that they
authorized an ad hoc committee in late
1952.

The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953 under
the direction of Howard Percy
Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA
employee, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation
Group. He was instructed by OSI to assemble a group of prominent
scientists to review the Air Force's UFO files.

In preparation for this, Robertson first personally reviewed Air
Force files and procedures. The Air Force had recently commissioned
the Battelle Memorial
Institute to scientifically study all of the UFO reports
collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. Robertson hoped to draw
on their statistical results, but Battelle insisted that they
needed much more time to conduct a proper study. (For more,
see below).

Other panel members were respected scientists and military
personnel who had worked on other classified military projects or
studies. All were then skeptical of UFO
reports, though to varying degrees. Apart from Robertson, the panel
included:

Most of what is known about the actual proceedings of the meetings
comes from sketchy minutes kept by Durant, later submitted as a
memo to the NSC. It is the only declassified document to date that
details the panel's discussions. In addition, various participants
would later comment on what transpired from their perspective.
Ed Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, first revealed the
existence of the secret panel in his 1956 insider book, but without
revealing names of panel members.

Formal meetings

The Panel had four consecutive days of formal meetings. In total,
they met for only 12 hours. Only 23 cases out of 2,331 Air Force
UFO cases on record (or about 1%) were reviewed. Although Ruppelt
wrote that the Panel studied their best cases, Hynek would opine
that the panel in fact seemed to have neither the time nor the
desire to study the more puzzling ones. For example, the radar
experts on the panel ( Alvarez and Page) seemed to show little
interest in reports of radar UFO cases, which they dismissed as
"anxiety over fast radar tracks" by the Air Defense Command.

Of the Panel members, Ruppelt would write in his private papers
that Goudsmit was exceptionally hostile to the subject: "Goudsmit
was probably the most violent anti-saucer man at the panel meeting.
Everything was a big joke to him which brought down the wrath of
the other panel members on numerous occasions." Goudsmit even
stated later that reporters of UFOs were as dangerous to society as
drug addicts.

Alvarez was also extremely skeptical but more professional in his
conduct. Page at the time was likewise hostile, later recalling
that he made a statement during the meeting that UFOs were
"nonsense", bringing about a reprimand from Robertson, despite
their good friendship. Ruppelt, however, felt that Page was more
open-minded, and although he obviously did not know much about
UFOs, he tended to line up with Hynek against Alvarez and Goudsmit
in their adamancy that UFOs could not exist.

In contrast, Robertson, Berkner, and Durant seemed to have a
personal interest in the subject. It was noted, for example, in a
CIA memo that although Berkner was not keen to participate, he
"felt strongly that the saucer problem should be thoroughly
investigated from a scientific point of view." Another CIA memo
produced after the completion of the panel's work indicates that
Durant, despite the panel's negative conclusions, thought that
materials on flying saucers should continue to be maintained by a
major division of OSI, such as Physics and Electronics.

The first
day, the panel viewed two amateur motion
pictures of UFOs: the Mariana UFO Incident footage and 1952 Utah
UFO Film (the latter was taken by Navy Chief Petty Officer
Delbert C. Newhouse, who had extensive experience with
aerial photography). Two Navy photograph and film analysts
(Lieutenants R.S. Neasham and Harry Woo) then reported their
conclusions: based on more than 1,000 man
hours of detailed analysis, the two films depicted objects that
were not any known aircraft, creature or weather phenomena. Air Force Captain Edward J.Ruppelt then began a summary of Air Force
efforts regarding UFO studies.

The second day, Ruppelt finished his presentation. Hynek then
discussed the Battelle
study, and the panel discussed with Air Force personnel the
problems inherent in monitoring UFO sightings.

The third day, Air Force Major Dewey
J.Fournet spoke to the panel.
For over a year he had coordinated UFO affairs for the Pentagon. Fournett supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis as
the best explanation for some puzzling UFO reports. For the
remainder of the third day, the panel discussed their conclusions,
and Robertson agreed to draft a preliminary report.

The fourth and final day, the panel rewrote and finalized their
report.

Conclusions and the Robertson Panel Report

The Robertson Panel's official report concluded that 90 percent of
UFO sightings could be readily identified with meteorological,
astronomical, or natural phenomena, and that the remaining 10
percent of UFO reports could, in all likelihood, be similarly
explained with detailed study. It was suggested that witnesses had
misidentified bright stars and planets, meteors, aurora, mirages,
atmospheric temperature inversions, and lenticular clouds; other sightings were
judged as likely misinterpretation of conventional aircraft, weather
balloons, birds, searchlights, kite, and other phenomena.

None of the Panel's members was formally trained in motion picture
or photographic analysis, and only one had any experience with
photography (astronomic still photography and not motion picture
film)Nonetheless, after screening the films only a few times, they
dismissed the idea that either the 1950 Montana UFO Film or the 1952 Utah UFO Film showed "genuine" UFOs.
The
Panel's members instead argued that the "UFOs" in the Montana film
were actually the reflections of two jet fighters alleged to be in
the area at the time and that those in the Utah film were actually
seagulls flying near the Great Salt Lake. However, the Panel's conclusions
contradicted U.S. Air Force photo analysists who had earlier
specifically ruled out birds as an explanation for the Utah film
and had thought that jets were a highly unlikely, but remotely
plausible, explanation for the Montana film (Clark, 1998). The
Panel's conclusions also seemingly ignored eyewitness testimony in
both film cases that the objects, while closer to the camera
operators, were clearly-defined metallic flying saucers, not the
rather indistinct lights seen on the films.

Furthermore, the Panel suggested the Air Force should begin a
"debunking" effort to reduce "public
gullibility" and demystify UFO reports, partly via a public relations campaign, using psychiatrists, astronomers and assorted celebrities to
significantly reduce public interest in UFOs. It was also
recommended that the mass media be used for the debunking,
including influential media giants like the Walt Disney Corporation. The primary
reasoning for this recommendation lay in the belief that the
Soviets might try to "mask" an actual invasion of the USA by
causing a wave of false "UFO" reports to swamp the Pentagon and
other military agencies, thus temporarily blinding the US
government to the impending Communist invasion.

Their formal recommendation stated "That the national security
agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying
Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of
mystery they have unfortunately acquired."

Also recommended was government monitoring of civilian groups
studying or researching UFOs "because of their potentially great
influence on mass thinking... the apparent irresponsibility and
possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind." Two
UFO groups in particular were singled out: APRO
and Civilian Saucer
Investigations (CSI).

The recommendations of the Robertson Panel were implemented by a
series of special military regulations. Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force
Publication 147 (JANAP 146) of December
1953 made reprinting of any UFO sighting to the public a crime
under the Espionage Act, with fines of up to ten thousand dollars
and imprisonment ranging from one to ten years. This act was
considered binding on all who knew of the act's existence,
including commercial airline pilots. A 1954 revision of Air Force
Regulation 200-2 (AFR 200-2) made all
sighting reports submitted to the air force classified material and
prohibited the release of any information about UFO sightings
unless the sighting was able to be positively identified.
In February 1958 a revision of AFR 200-2
allowed the military to give the FBI the names of people who were
"illegally or deceptively bringing the subject [of UFOs] to public
attention". Because of the Robertson Panel the Air Force's Project Blue Book's procedures of
investigating UFOs also changed, attempting to find a quick
explanation and then file them away. Project Blue Book was a successor of
Project Grudge.

In 1956 retired Marine Major Donald
Keyhoe founded the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a UFO
investigations organization. By 1969 Keyhoe turned his focus on the
CIA as the source of the UFO cover up. NICAP's board, headed by
Colonel Jospeph Bryan III, forced
Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Bryan was actually a former covert
CIA agent who had served the agency as founder and head of its
psychological warfare division. Under Bryan's leadership, the NICAP
disbanded its local and state affiliate groups, and by 1973 it had
been completely closed.

Publicity and responses

Ruppelt's 1956 book The Report On unidentified Flying
Objects contained the first publicly-released information
about the Robertson Panel, with a summary of their proceedings and
conclusions. Ruppelt's book did not include the names of the Panel
members, nor any institutional or governmental affiliations.

In 1958, the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a
civilian UFO research group, requested that the Air Force release
the panel's report. The Air Force released three summary paragraphs
and the names of the panel's members. In 1966 a nearly full-length
version of the report was printed in the science column of the
Saturday Review.

Panel member Thornton Page would later change some of his more
stridently skeptical conclusions regarding the Panel's report, and
regarding UFOs in general. In his 1969 critique of the Condon Report, Page would lament the
"excessive levity" he brought to the Panel's proceeding, detailing
how he later thought the UFO subject deserved serious
scrutiny.

Hynek's opinions changed in later years as well, so much that he
became, to many, the scientifically respectable voice of Ufology. He would lament that the Robertson Panel
had "made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable, and for
nearly 20 years not enough attention was paid to the subject to
acquire the kind of data needed even to decide
the nature of the UFO phenomenon."

Effects of the Robertson Panel report

According to Swords, the Robertson Panel's report had an "enormous"
impact throughout the U.S. Government: the CIA abandoned a "major high
level [UFO] investigation" planned in conjunction with the National
Security Council; UFO research projects by personnel in The Pentagon were quashed; and Project Blue Book's hopes to
establish a scientific advisory board were dashed. Blue Book
was also downgraded in status and stripped of most responsibility
for investigating serious, well-attested UFO cases, which were
instead secretly turned over to a newly-formed division of the Air
Defense Command. Directives were also issued not to discuss the
unexplainable cases with the public and to reduce the percentage of
"unknowns"

Though the CIA's official history suggests that the Robertson
Panel's conclusions were never carried out, there is evidence that
contradicts this. Perhaps the most unambiguous evidence for the
Robertson Panel's covert impact on news media reporting about UFOs
is a personal letter by Dr. Thornton
Page, discovered in the Smithsonian archives by biochemist
Michael D.Swords. The 1966 letter, addressed to
former Robertson Panel Secretary Frederick C.Durant, confides that Page "helped
organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions."
Page was no doubt referring to the CBS Reports TV broadcast of the
same year, "UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy?" narrated by Walter Cronkite. (Incidentally, this program
was criticized for inaccurate and misleading presentations.) Page's
letter indicates that the Robertson Panel was still putting a
negative spin on UFO news at least 13 years after the panel
met.

Furthermore, according to Swords, there is ample evidence to prove
that CSI was pressured to disband by the U.S. Government. FBI
documents indicate that noted engineer Walther Riedel was pressured to resign from
CSI, and not long afterwards, the group disbanded; in response,
Robertson wrote to Marshall
Chadwell, stating "[t]hat ought to fix the Forteans." (Robertson was referring to the devotees
of American writer Charles Fort
(1874-1932), whose books argued in favor of the reality of
extraterrestrial on Earth.) APRO was active through the late 1980s.
There has also been speculation that UFO group NICAP was infiltrated by CIA operatives.

Even later, Randles and Hough note that there was a "CIA memo from
1976" which "tells how the agency is still having to 'keep in touch
with reporting channels' in ufology (in
other words, to spy on UFO groups." (Randles and
Hough, 103)

Some scholars investigators have suggested that the Robertson
Panel's true objective was to justify a CIA domestic
propaganda-and-surveillance campaign, rather than to investigate
UFOs. For example, journalist Howard Blum writes that it is
difficult to accept any argument that the Robertson Panel was ever
intended as a serious scientific analysis: Blum argues that the
Panel's perfunctory rejection of the U.S. Navy's detailed
examination of the UFO films is all but impossible to justify on
scientific grounds. Similarly, Swords has argued that the Panel
seems to have been designed as an elaborate theater exercise
instead of a serious attempt to get to the bottom of the UFO issue.
Although the Panel put on a show of evaluating some UFO evidence,
its scientific analysis was cursory and its conclusions mostly
likely pre-ordained. Also, the Panel only looked only at evidence
in the public domain, not higher-quality classified military
evidence. Psychologist David R.Saunders, a member of the
University of Colorado's UFO study (the Condon Committee), had earlier expressed
similar conclusions. Given that Robertson had worked as a
high-level scientific-intelligence officer during World War II, he
would have been familiar with the use of such tactics to hide a
sensitive national-security problem from scrutiny by
outsiders.

It is a widely-held conclusion amongst UFO investigators that the
Robertson Panel's conclusions and recommendations had a great
influence on official United States policy regarding UFOs for many
decades.

Contrast with Battelle Memorial Institute study results

When the Battelle Memorial
Institute finally finished their massive review of Air Force
UFO cases in 1954 (called "Project
Blue Book Special Report No. 14"), their results were markedly
different from those of the Robertson Panel. Whereas the Robertson
Panel spent only twelve hours reviewing a limited number of cases,
the Battelle Institute had four full-time scientific analysts
working for over two years analyzing 3201 reports. Classifying a
case as "unknown" required agreement among all four analysts,
whereas a "known" or conventional classification required agreement
by only two analysts. Still they concluded 22% of the cases
remained unsolvable. The percentage climbed to 35% when considering
only the best cases and fell to 18% for the worst cases. Not only
are the percentages of unknowns much higher than those for the
Robertson Panel, but the higher percentages for the better cases
are directly opposite one conclusion of the panel that their
remaining 10% of unknowns would disappear if further investigated
and more information was available. Furthermore, the Battelle study
had already thrown out cases they deemed to have insufficient
information to make a determination (9% of all cases). Thus, the
fact that a case was classified as "unknown" had nothing to do with
lack of information or investigation.

The study also looked at six characteristics of the sightings:
duration, speed, number, brightness, color, and shape. For all
characteristics, the knowns and unknowns differed at a highly
statistically significant level, further indicating that the knowns
and unknowns were distinctly different classes of phenomena.

Despite this, the summary section of the final report declared it
was "highly improbable that any of the reports of unidentified
aerial objects... represent observations of technological
developments outside the range of present-day knowledge." A number
of researchers have noted that the conclusions of the analysts were
usually at odds with their own statistical results, displayed in
240 charts, tables, graphs and maps. Possibly the analysts simply
had trouble accepting their own results. Others conjecture this was
another result of the Robertson Panel, the conclusions being
written to satisfy the new political climate within Project Blue
Book following the panel.